Tips for Managing Ideas like Other Company Assets

You wouldn't let an employee leave the company with their laptop or PDA, so why allow them to go without having collected critical IP – ideas they conceived while employed thinking about how to make your company's products better.

Here are five tips for better management of your idea assets:

For those of you who attended the Tom Grant webinar recently, thank you, your participation made it a success. As is usually the case, we received more questions than Tom was able to respond to during the duration of the webinar.

However, Tom has very graciously responded to your unanswered questions.

You can't help but want to turn off the radio or TV with the daily reports of declining profits, layoffs & economic crisis's around the world, and company acquisitions.

When you find an interesting perspective from someone's opinion whom you respect, namely Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, you sit up and take notice.

How could the breakdown of a decade-old washing machine become a parable for how companies must do business in the early 21st-Century?

Funny you should ask.

Like most people, my wife and I don’t shop for washers and dryers very often. So when our washer finally gave up, we found ourselves back in the market for a new one—an endeavor we hadn’t done in about 10 years.

And what a difference a decade makes. Companies that manufacture electronics such as cell phones and flat-screen TVs now offer a full line of washers and dryers, and stores known for selling computers and software have whole sections devoted to refrigerators and washers and dryers.